Mr. Speaker, we all know that when a person loses his or her job, it is one of the most traumatic things to endure for the individual, his or her family and the community.

I want to correct my colleague from the government who said that the Liberal plan was going to cost $4 billion. In fact, the Parliamentary Budget Officer actually took the government to task by saying that the government was flat-out wrong. He said very publicly that the Liberal calculation saying that our proposal would cost $1 billion was indeed correct and that the government's figures were dead wrong.

Workers from across Canada pay into the EI fund equally and yet the benefits that they accrue can be very, very different. In my province of British Columbia a person has to work almost twice as long to receive lower benefits than someone, for example, in the Maritimes would receive. Does my friend not think it would be fair and equitable for workers from across Canada to be able to receive the same amount of EI for the same length of time?